Google and Apple Sued over 'Street View' feature

The lawyer armies of both Google and Apple have yet another battle on their hands as last week one PanoMap Technologies, LLC, a virtually unknown company based in Florida, sued both of them for patent infringement.

Filed in Orlando federal court, PanoMap's complaint claims that the Street View feature of the Google Maps iOS app violates US Patent No. 6,563,529. This patent is entitled "Interactive system for displaying detailed view and direction in panoramic images" and it describes "A method and system for indicating the camera position, direction, and field of view in a map or panoramic image comprises a map image window which displays a map or panoramic image of the site to be studied (house, apartment, city, etc.)."

The 6,563,529 patent was given to scientist Jerry Jongerius back in 2003 and was transferred to Empire IP in 2011. PanoMap got a hold of it (through another transfer, gotta love this) only this month (on February 14th to be exact).

PanoMap says Google and Apple were aware of their infringement and wants triple damages.

Really? What is next? Some little piss-ant software developer going to sue T.I. for making a virtual calculator that does addition? I guess that is kind of a bad example, but the point is that the whole suing situations going around lately needs to stop. Can we have a single day without company A suing company B over some stupid shit?